There’s a revolution going on in the gaming industry right now as we speak. Helping to lead that revolution are the two guys over at the Forge, the web-site for indie rpgs, Ron Edwards and Clinton R. Nixon. Both these guys have put out some phenomenal games in the past and Nixon’s latest effort, The Shadow of Yesterday (tSoY) is no exception. If your group is looking for fantasy game that sets all creative cylinders firing, this is the game for you!
What is tSoY?
Clinton R. Nixon is the same guy that brought out great games Donjon and Paladin. So this game writer knows what he’s doing when he makes a game. Definitely someone to be looking out for with his consistently high quality games.
In the book, Nixon says he wrote the game as a response to a challenge made by Ron Edwards who said that all game designers should write their own fantasy heartbreaker RPG, a “game based off of experiences and problems playing Dungeons and Dragons.” That said, there were a number of game influences on the book including D&D 3.0, The Riddle of Steel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more. What Nixon has done is merged these influences, mixed in a healthy dose of Tolkien and Howard and created an interesting and fun fantasy game.
The Setting
The game world is set in a place called Near. A thousand years or so back, Near suffered a great cataclysm when a big meteor hit the planet. This catastrophe caused civilizations to crumble and millions died (hence the title of the game). Fast forward to now. We have a group of various kingdoms living on a chunk of the world. They are surrounded by mountains to the north and west and ocean to the east and south. This allows the author to give us a small group of five distinct cultural groups with the possibility for more in the future (an expansion is already in the works). The five cultures start with the most “civilized” at the south and the further north you get, the more primitive the people become. Nixon doesn’t stop there though, he also states that the further north you go, the whiter the people’s complexion becomes. This is a nice juxtaposition on our world and normal fantasy expectations where the civilized are often white and the savages are of darker skin.
An Overview of the Different Cultures
First we’re introduced to the land of Maldor, (no relation to Mordor). Maldor used to be the seat of civilization, but now is a kingdom torn apart by war and petty lords vying for power. The serf classes are the big losers in this and thus a revolutionary movement has been started. Other points of note about Mordor include many ruins of long dead cities and a strong magic academy.
Next, we move on to Zaru. These are a people of peaceful farmers who used to be a wealthy independent nation until the cataclysm. Now they are enslaved by the Ammeni, who we will get to next. The Zaru have a special magical language that could enable them to become much more powerful, and that is the crux for these people. Do they throw away all their beliefs and become no better than their conquerors? Some Zaru say yes, some say no. The real challenge here is playing a pacifistic non-violent character in a violent world. Role-playing gold!
The Ammeni could be ripped right out of the pages of any Robert E. Howard Conan book. A decadent ruling class, poisons everywhere, and they have enslaved an entire people as well. These guys are easy to hate. So why would you want to play one? Well, mostly just the ruling classes are decadent, the regular Joes gotta work hard, just like us. Plus they are the trading kings of the region. Nixon makes it easy to choose these people to play with lots of hooks and cool ideas.
Further north we meet the Khale. They are definitely low tech, tribal and still very close to nature. In fact so close, they have special access to “the Green World”; a separate dimension/world/place where only the Khale can go. If I were to describe the Khale, I would call them Celtic-hippie-rangers.
Finally, there are the Qek. I’m going to gloss over them quickly and just say that they are a very primitive people with a deep insight into a spiritual type of magic.
The Races
There are four races you can play in tSoY. Of course we have the ubiquitous humans. According to Nixon, we are good at war and love. There are also elves. Elves were once human but learned that the only thing that mattered in life was themselves. The are a cold race of immortals who cannot die, but just keep being reborn again and again. Well, not actually, if an elf ever sacrifices their life to save someone else’s life or creates life, they will be reborn a final time. Next are the goblins. They look like a cross between demons, dogs and men, but they too can become human. If a goblin ever experiences true love, they can transform into a human (the exact opposite of elves!). So elves, humans and goblins are all interconnected. Cool, isn’t it? The last race are the Ratkin. These are as you would expect, loyal to the litter, living in the ruins of man, stealing everything not nailed down.
The System
The system differs from your regular rpg in several ways. First, you have only three stats; vigor, instinct, and reason. These stats are not used in the usual way, but are instead dice pools, allowing you to add an extra dice to your roll in order to succeed. How are dice used? Glad you asked. Roll 2d6, add your characters relevant ability (such as stealing, or knife fighting) and compare it to a chart. A nine is needed for a basic success so you can see adding an extra die can be a powerful advantage. During character creation, characters choose skills from a list of categories. Then the player chooses which categories the character will specialize in. Those categories will be easier to improve when XP is doled out.
Speaking of XP, this game uses a really great mechanic where the player chooses how to earn XP. The system uses something called keys. A character may have up to 5 keys and each key details how a character will improve. So if for example, your character had the key of faith, they would gain one XP for defending their faith to others, two XP for converting someone, and five when they defend their faith, even when it brings great harm. Also included are secrets. These are more in line with typical game bonuses such as disarming, a signature weapon and so on.
“Aha!” you say, “I can already see where this game is broken! I’ll just take a bunch of keys and my character will be improving like mad. I’ll have so many XP I’ll win!” And yes, you would be right. Of course, gaining all that XP would put your character in some pretty hairy situations, so you would have a ball doing it. And there is a clause in the game that if at any time your character rolls a 22, they win and are retired in some way. Of course the only way for your character to roll a 22 is for them to boost up an ability to 10 and then roll a 12, so it is a conscious decision on the player’s part.
So How Is This Game Different From That Other Fantasy RPG?
Well, I don’t like to compare apples to oranges, but here goes. Although the author does cite influences from that game, it differs in many key ways. The character keys allow a player to choose how they will improve. The game is linked in no way to succeeding in a mission or killing things and taking their stuff. If one of your keys is killing things and taking their stuff, then yes, you will improve, but those are choices the players make for themselves, it is not forced upon you by the system.
A second great point about the game is a concept called bringing down the pain. Many RPGs are guilty of this rules construction – making combat the only dramatic conflict resolution process available to the players. Not so in tSoY! In a different RPG game I played last year, my character was involved in a very important chess match. At the same time another player in another location was involved in a duel. The game went like this: at the Duel “you duck under his sword blow (dice rattle) and swipe back at him.” The player runs, jumps leaps over tables and swings from chandeliers, buckets of dice are thrown. The Chess game: “okay, he moves a piece forward (dice rattle) and you win. Not fair! Why does the duel get all the drama? Can’t a chess game be dramatic too? Well, with bring down the pain a player (but not the GM) can choose to make any confrontation as quick as the above chess game or as detailed at the duel. It is not limited to combat, but rather to what the players feel is important to them.
The Bads
In a review, it’s always good to include the things you didn’t like about a game. Unfortunately my list is really small. One of the bonuses of buying a game from an independent designer is that you get a pure vision. Great works of are never made by committee and so it is with tSoy. But one of the down sides is that you don’t have the support of an established company so production may suffer. I’m happy to say that there were almost no typos in the book. I did have some confusion about character generation caused by a paragraph being in a different place than stated. The table of contents is also off on a few items, but that is really a minor concern. For some people, art is also an important factor in a game. This book has a nice amount of art, but because there is no art director, it tends to be a bit diverse in style. For example, the Zaru are drawn in a cartoony style where the Ammeni are drawn in a black and white cut out style. Most of the art is of very good quality and one piece of an Ammeni poisoner I found to be just astounding!
Conclusion
Go out and buy this game (or go online actually)! At only $20, it’s a steal. It has all the details that a fantasy lover enjoys; decadent rulers, powerful magic, elves and goblins, ancient ruins, nomadic barbarians, love, sex, slaves and ratlings! Where it shines is in the system, where the players are given vast control over how their character progresses and by doing so, explicitly tells the GM what kind of game they want to play. With the added bonus of bringing down the pain the players can choose to focus on the conflicts that matter to them and leave the inconsequential ones to resolve quickly. I can’t recommend this game enough to those kinds of players who are looking for games where the players decide the story. You won’t find charts, movement rates or damage bonuses in this game, so if that kind of thing tickles your fancy, this may not be the game for you. But for the rest of us, we have a great fantasy game that will be sure to help create some truly involving character driven stories.
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